Archive for August, 2008

Geoffrey’s Telegraph obit is the first thing I’ve seen that goes some way to doing him justice. I never knew he left the BBC because of the contempt the organisation had for comedy at the time: “One annual report dismissed it (comedy) with the phrase “all the way from high-value costume drama right the way down to sitcom”.

Well, I’ve just had some terrible news. Geoffrey Perkins, who produced the first series of ‘Father Ted’, has died in a road accident.

Geoffrey was the man who found our early ‘Ted’ script, (at that time, written as a mock-documentary) and suggested we turn it into a sitcom. He was the man who chose the house that became our iconic central location (poring over a pile of location photographs, stabbing it with his finger and saying “That’s the one”). He also persuaded us to use Neil Hannon’s ‘Songs of Love’ as our theme music.

This last one was a sticking point for a while. Arthur and I preferred a song by Neil that would later become ‘A Woman of the World’ off the ‘Casanova’ album. That song was jaunty and silly and to us perfect in that it seemed to be subtly making fun of the form we were working in.

“Why do you want to make fun of your show?” said Geoffrey, finally, looking wounded and worried. “People will love these characters.”

I later realised that it was a fork in the road, that discussion, and if we had not travelled the way Geoffrey suggested, we’d have ended up lost…we may never have made it to series three. Without Geoffrey, ‘Father Ted’ would have been a cacophonous riot, and not nearly as loved as it is today. He gave the show a heart, and gave me–still very young, and unsure as to what type of person I should try to become– someone to model myself on.

I hate the fact that I’m writing this. You’ll see his credits soon enough and realise what we’ve lost. Goodbye, Geoffrey. I wish we’d worked together more.